The other half was ordinary sitcom material, springing from the antics of boorish Fred Flintstone, who was constantly hatching insane schemes with the help of his neighbor Barney Rubble and subsequently getting them both into trouble with their wives, Wilma and Betty. Later in the series the Flinstones had a daughter, Pebbles; this inspired the Rubbles to adopt a son, the comically super-strong Bamm-Bamm. Dino and Hoppy were the respective family pet(-asaurus)es.

Was the most successful prime-time animated series ever until The Simpsons.

Like many very popular shows from the 1960s and 1970s, The Flintstones just would not die. It survived cancellation in any number of subsequent forms, from Saturday morning cartoons featuring teenaged versions of Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles (the latter voiced by Sally Struthers) through a pair of live-action motion pictures, all the way to a breakfast cereal which is still marketed in the early 21st century (and which is the occasion for continuous new Flintstones animation). Not to mention the vitamins...

The Artifact: Ads for the aforementioned vitamins, being marketed to parents, haven't featured the characters in any form other than what appears on the packaging or the product itself in years (preferring to feature footage of active, healthy-looking kids).

Bamboo Technology: pretty much the main thing that makes The Flintstones any different from just setting it in 1960s America, this trope provides much of the humor after the standard sitcom plots and all the silly names. Cars? Telephones? Airplanes? They had 'em. Radio? Television? The only reason they didn't have any electronics more advanced than that was because of when the show was made. If one takes the Fruity Pebbles commercials as Canon, then they actually have not only computers and robots, but Humongous Mecha.

Later spinoffs and TV movies usually update the technology equivalents to match when the spinoff/movie was made. Thus the late 1970s The New Fred and Barney Show featured CB radios, 80s spinoff The Flintstone Kids featured video games, while the 90s TV movies I Yabba Dabba Do and Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby feature desktop computers, VCRs, CDs and car alarms.

Big Damn Movie: The first film has ambition, loyalty, betrayal, corporate intrigue, and a climactic battle upon an elaborate makeshift Death Trap. An average episode of the TV series is basically just Wacky Hijinks.

Big Darn Movie: The Man Called Flintstone made at the same time as the Original Series. Originally intended as a multipart season premire, it was adapted instead into a movie parodying the hot Secret Agent genre.

Bowling for Ratings: Fred and Barney are frequently shown bowling, either by themselves or as part of an organized group.

Broken Aesop: In "Samantha", after some ridicule, the wives are determined to prove they can handle a camping trip with Fred and Barney. They are joined by the secretly magical Samantha. The episode ends with everyone thinking Wilma and Betty outdid Fred and Barney, but as the viewers saw, Samantha cheated - using her magic to make things vastly easier for the wives than it would've been otherwise.

Canon Discontinuity: Dino is a pretty startling example. In his debut episode, he has a different colour, usually walks on his hind legs, and can not only talk, but can act and fast-talk people, with a vocabulary to match. At the end of the episode, he goes home with the Flintstones... and then turns into a dog with only the usual level of cartoon animal intelligence (in that he can understand the exact sentences people say and act upon them, but is never seen to be able to talk).

Childhood Friend Romance: If you go by historic timelines, it could be said that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were the very first pair for this trope. Upon first meeting as babies, they were the best of friends and had many adventures as they grew up together, eventually falling in love, getting married, and having children of their own. It was even Lampshaded by Bill and Joe themselves during a cameo appearance at their wedding.

Crunchtastic: Their aforementioned cereal. The short-lived Dino Pebbles Cereal, for instance, used "Marshmellow Dinolicious" in their ads, prompting Dino to Glomp whoever said it.

Darker and Edgier: The Flintstones animated movie made a few years ago called Flintstones on the Rocks. Fred and Wilma's silly cartoon fighting turned into them being a genuinely unhappy married couple, and the opening scene is them fighting in a marriage counselling session.

Driven to Suicide: A heartbroken Barney attempted this when thinking that the Rockefellers won their court case and were free to adopt Bamm-Bamm, by roping a boulder to his torso from a bridge. Fred saved his life, but caught the boulder by accident and wound up (alive, but grumbling) in the river.

Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Because a Flintstones which only used creatures that lived during the Paleolithic wouldn't be nearly as interesting, although those kinds of animals are around as well.

The Gambling Addict: Fred is a compulsive gambler. Simply mentioning the word "bet" around him will cause him to get a crazy look in his eyes and start repeating the word over and over in a loud voice:

God for a Day: Well more like "Boss For A Day" when Fred is envious of his boss and the Great Gazoo turns him into a boss. He finds that it's actually a burden, since he has to deal with higher-ups, stay late in meetings, etc.

Hair Reboot: In the episode featuring Stony Curtis, when Wilma quickly gets herself cleaned up to meet the celebrity, four quick strokes of her brush are all that is needed to bring her hair to its usual style.

Happily Adopted: Bamm-Bamm is notable for being one of the first examples on a cartoon.

Possibly a sendup of the sort of people who coo over babies and find their every smelly fart to be evidence of what an exceptional child they have on their hands. "Oooh, look at him grip my finger! Feel how strong he is!" Well, this kid really is.

Ink Suit Actor: James Darren, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York gave voice to their cartoon likenesses on the show.

Jumping Out of a Cake: In "Frantic City", the cake at the Water Buffalos' convention was supposed to have showgirls inside. It had their angry wives instead, rolling pins in hand.

The "I Yabba Dabba Do" special played with this when the woman supposed to jump out of the cake at Bamm-Bamm's bachelor party walked out because she wanted more money. This leads to Barney being forced to substitute.

Mythology Gag: In the live-action movie, Fred is mistakenly called "Flagstone" a couple times. The Flagstones was the original planned name for the series.

It was changed to "Flintstones" because there was a comic strip called Hi And Lois (co-drawn by Mort Walker) whose family was named the Flagstons.

It has been said that Bamm-Bamm was inspired from Ubble-Ubble, the cave boy in the Ruff & Reddy story arc "The Chickosaurus Caper."

Nice Kitty...: Subverted: Barney sees a Bantydactyl and cheerfully says "Here, pussy pussy" to it until it cheerfully opens its mouth and grabs him leaving only his feet exposed.

Never My Fault: In "The Astra' Nuts" Fred and Barney go to get their physical, but Betty gives the wrong address and they end up accidentally enlisting in the army. Of course Wilma and Betty blame them for "bollixing" it up.

Never Sleep Again: In one episode, Wilma, Betty and Barney are led to (falsely) believe Fred has an ailment that will kill him if he falls asleep. Also, he must not be informed of this or he'll die too. The gang uses increasingly creative methods to keep Fred awake.

No Accounting for Taste: Fred isn't a bad personper se, but he's not putting as much effort into the marriage as Wilma, who is often forced to suffer his tantrums and schemes. Subverted in one of the movies, though, where Fred had to struggle to get Wilma's favor back after a fight during a holiday trip.

No One Could Survive That: The Green Goose and his henchmen, as Fred and Barney trapped them inside the doomsday missile/rocket, which is launched into space, that Fred set it to. The screen fades to black just as the rocket is about to ascend into space.

The Other Darrin: Hanna-Barbera voice actor Daws Butler replaced Mel Blanc as Barney Rubble for a few episodes in 1961 while Blanc was hospitalized following a near-fatal car accident. (The Hanna-Barbera publicity department, however, did not acknowledge this, and Blanc was still listed in the closing credits.)

In addition, Gerry Johnson replaced Bea Benaderet as Betty Rubble in the show's fifth and sixth seasons when Benaderet left to concentrate on her role as Kate Bradley on Petticoat Junction. Johnson died soon after The Flintstones ended its ABC run and would be replaced in 1971 by Gay Hartwig.

Alan Reed lent his voice to Fred for the final time in the debut episode of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. He died soon after and would be replaced by Henry Corden.

Pretty in Mink: Fred is having some sort of problem, making him almost completely lethargic. Wilma buys an expensive fur coat of "genuine Siberian mammoth", knowing the cost will make Fred freak out. That and their clothes are most likely all animal skins.

Punny Name: Pretty much every character or locale on the show has one, based on some variant of "rock" or "stone." Also, "Barney Rubble" (nearly always shortened to "barney") was Cockney rhyming-slang for "trouble" long before movies were invented.

The Spanish dub version changed everyone's names for no apparent reason, but still followed this trope. The Flintstones (who should have been called Los Pedernales) were instead called Los Picapiedra (the Stonecutters). Made even stranger because occasional characters with the last name Pedernal did appear in this version!

The original Hungarian dubs also renamed almost all of the characters (most famously Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble to Kovakövi Frédi & Kavicsi Béni, and Wilma & Betty to Vilma & Irma, in keeping with the rhyming-theme the dub had going on), but the dubs of later spin-offs and movies restored the original English Flintstone surname. Could get confusing, since there were at least three kind of dubs, with wholly different voice-casts.

A Robot Chicken sketch parodied the phenomenon when a deliveryman rattles off a long, awkward URL mishmashing Amazon.com and at least three shoehorned rock puns. Fred looks at him for a minute and he says, "Look, not all of these rock puns are easy."

Every couple to appear on the show, really, with the exception of the second generation of the leads.

Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm eventually got married and had fraternal twins... much to the surprise of Fred and Barney who were expecting them to have only one child (Fred wanted a boy, Barney a girl).